My Birthday tarot reading

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Oh my apologies.

Ok so the very center card is a Joker card, and the image is of the alleged 13th missing Zodiac sign known as Ophiuchus (The Snake Bearer).

The way this reading works is you place one Joker card in the very center to represent the seeker or the question at hand. The Joker card in a normal deck of playing cards can equal The Fool in tarot cards.

So anyways the card spread I had read about actuallt uses oridinary playing cards in place of the Major Arcana cards in tarot. What you use is a Joker (or 2 of Hearts if no Joker card is available), the Aces, the Nines, the Ten of Hearts, the Kings, the Queens, and the Jacks. Each one corresponds to a Major Arcana card.

Now the way I read to do this you arrange the cards in a cross pattern and mix the cards so some are in reverse and some are upright before you shuffle and lay the cards out.

When you pull the cards the ones in reverse are the ones you read and the ones upright are discarded. If there's not enough reversed cards to read then the answer to the question is inconclusive and you have to be a week before you can ask the cards again.

However I don't particularly like that part of the reading so I adjusted it with my own rules. Instead of a cross I arranged the cards in a more pentacle pattern but applied the same meaning to each of the 5 cards surrounding The Joker.

And I like to read all the cards upright so I get the answer to my question each time. It's obviously a stretch from the original system discovered in Spain by Madeline Montalban but the way I see it cartomancers are often encouraged to come up a unique system to themselves insteas of directly copying other people's systems. So I think my way of doing this works.

Here's a list of the Tarot Major Arcana Cards that correspond with the selected Playing Cards.

Happy belated birthday, RDF.
We had a milestone birthday here last week too.

All the best.

Thank you Isabella!

What do you think of my new Zodiac-themed playing cards? I have another deck I want to show off later when I have time. They're Hanafuda cards with beautiful Japanese-style artwork depicting all the different kinds of yokai in Japanese folklore.

Yokai are very interesting monsters. They're said to be similar to the concept of demons in Western folklore but I believe they're more like the Fae in Celtic folklore. The Fae creatures were neither good nor evil, just like the Yokai. They enjoyed making mischief and while some could be dangerous to humans others could prove benovelent and helpful.

I don't know if you've ever watched the Studio Ghibili movie "Spirited Away" but it's a really beautiful animated movie about a Japanese girl who somehow crosses into the spirit world of the yokai and she's forced to work for a greedy old witch who runs a bathhouse for the yokai spirits to come and replenish themselves. If you have not seen it I highly recommend it.

So if you use just normal playing cards do you use the whole deck or just certain ones

You can use it both ways. There's so many different systems for reading playing cards, some systems use every card in the deck, others will cut out certain cards. For example Lenormand card readings are based on an old German system of fortune telling which cuts out cards 2 - 5 and the Jokers and only leaves the Aces, 6 -10, and the Kings, Queens, and Jacks.

There's literally countless ways for reading cards. Try researching some old books about the subject and find a system that resonates best with you.

I don't know anything about Tarot cards (or folklore, Yokai, goddesses, etc.) but your cards look pretty. I have a couple of sets of Tarot cards and Oracle cards because I think they're nice collectibles but I have no idea how to use them or read them. They stay in the box so they don't get hurt.

My ex-bf was really into Tarot and did readings for me quite often if I'd slept with the deck under my pillow. They were his cards not mine, the standard yellow and blue ones. I didn't understand how it worked and I never kept track of anything to know if it was right or wrong either. I seem to remember getting Queen of Cups a lot, if that means anything, and the thing with all the swords.

Ah ok, fair enough.

I'm glad you think my cards are cool though. And I think judging by that brief bit information you shared the Queen of Cups could represent who you are as a person deep down, probably the kind of person who feels everything more strongly than others even when you appear to keep your emotions together and while you can be compassionate and giving you are also vulnerable to being hurt or taken advantage of a lot. Having a lot of swords surround this kind of Queen would be a clear indicator of that in a reading as those are the cards that often bring misery and problems.

Same goes with Queen of Hearts showing up with a lot of Spades around her in readings.

I believe a Queen of Cups or Hearts suits you best.


Personally I still think I'm a Jack of Spades (Swords). I'm very youthful at heart and while the Jack of Spades isn't truly a bad person, his biggest flaw is that he can be kind of lazy and thoughtless. It's like he suffers a mental blockage due to his immaturity levels but once he evolves past that young phase he could be either the ambitious King of Spades or if a girl will become the Queen of Spades who is regarded as the "Widow" (or a Divorcee or Old Maid) because she may be unlucky in love but comes into her own power.